


hold me tight

by tempalays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Domestic, Fluff, Living Together, M/M, Steve paints Bucky's arm, bucky is very in love, implied PTSD, soft, steves feeling bad and being reclusive and buckys like paint my arm uwu, very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 09:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18808060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempalays/pseuds/tempalays
Summary: “What’s on your mind, Stevie” Bucky reaches out from behind him and cards his fingers through his hair, Steve sighing and tipping his head back onto Bucky’s abdomen behind him. They stay like that for a little while, Steve eventually shutting his eyes as Bucky continues to run his hand through his hair.-Steve's having a bad brain day, and Bucky has a metal arm and some paint and figures he'll help in the only he knows how to.





	hold me tight

**Author's Note:**

> finally something that isnt sad and angsty! please enjoy this outburst of stevebucky fluff! ri this is all for u uwu thank u for the prompt <3

Goddamn does Steve look pretty in the sun. 

 

It comes through the window of their apartment, and it’s always as if it bends around whatever ever it needs to so that it can reach Steve’s skin, because wherever he goes a part of him is illuminated. The curtains are half drawn, it’s not even that warm of a day but somehow it still manages to reach him as he sits cross legged on the couch with a sketchbook in his lap.

 

Bucky’s always admired Steve’s skill at art, of all types of it. Back when they were kids they’d go to the supply store together and Steve would buy a colouring pencil in a hue that he didn’t already have when he had the spare money, and Bucky would trail behind him in case anyone had a problem that his Steve liked doing art, and was _ ‘pretty good at it as well’.  _ Bucky would be lying if he said he’d never stolen one of them, just so he could see Steve’s shy smile as he handed him a perfectly sharpened pencil in coral or aquamarine for him to make his new picture.

 

He still managed to keep that skill, if anything getting better at it during all those years that Bucky was gone. When he was trying to get his memories back, trying to remember just the tiniest details about walking those New York streets with Steve, Steve would draw out scenes that he remembered and walked Bucky through them. He had a sketchbook full of them, filled with pictures of Bucky’s old living room, their old schoolyard, the place they grabbed their lunch from. The drawings were in watercolour and pencil and charcoal but no matter the medium, Steve would take Bucky’s hand into his own tell him the stories of when they were kids using the pictures to illustrate them. Once Bucky started remembering, those sketchbooks got relegated to a pile in a closet, but now they have their own shelf on the bookcase serving as a reminder of the past should either of them want it.

 

Once Bucky was stable they moved into a bigger place together, one with big windows and natural light, and a studio for Steve to work in. It scared him at first, scared Bucky how open it was and how people could see him, and he spent the first few weeks standing by the feature windows figuring out the furthest distance and vantage point someone would have to have in order to get an accurate shot at him when he wasn’t paying attention. He moved on from that though, comforted half by Steve that no one was going to open fire in two super soldiers, half with the knowledge that unless they got a good headshot he would be fine. He knew that from experience.

 

Despite getting the place for the studio though, Steve works wherever he wants. Sometimes a certain location will inspire him, and Bucky will wake up in the late morning to see Steve over the kitchen counter drawing a still life with oil pastels, or with an easel set up by one of the windows while he draws the skyline. Bucky joked once, that if they were ever in a rough spot they could sell his art but Steve just scoffed at him and told him that he didn’t want anyone else looking at it, like it was a diary. A couple months later though Steve started auctioning it off for kids hospitals and paying off lunch debt at schools and sending kids to university. Bucky only feels half responsible for that, when Steve gets called in to Good Morning America to talk about his whole art charity initiative. Of course Steve mentions that he was inspired by something Bucky told him, which adds another thing to the list of mumbled achievements that make Bucky turn scarlet when people ask about them. 

 

Today though, Steve’s on the couch. His sketchbook is on his lap and his shoulders are hunched over, the pencil in his hand going over and over the same place on the page. So he’s anxious. 

 

As much as Steve has changed, he’s still the same kid from the thirties and he’s adamant that he doesn’t waste materials making art when he’s angry or upset or anxious because he never ends up liking it and it whenever he looks at it it just reminds him of how he was feeling at the time. Bucky thought that one of the purposes of doing art was to let out your feelings, that what the woman had told him when he was doing art therapy for a little while, but who’s Bucky to judge. 

 

“What’s on your mind, Stevie” Bucky reaches out from behind him and cards his fingers through his hair, Steve sighing and tipping his head back onto Bucky’s abdomen behind him. They stay like that for a little while, Steve eventually shutting his eyes as Bucky continues to run his hand through his hair, occasionally twirling a lock through his fingers. 

 

“Just. A bad day I guess.” Steve sighs again, and he puts the pencil he was using into the pencil case beside him. Bucky doesn’t stop playing with his hair, sometimes scratching just behind Steve’s ear as it does it, occasionally getting another little sigh when he gets the right spot.

 

“You wanna talk about it?”

 

Another sigh.

 

“Not really.” 

 

And that’s fair enough. Bucky doesn’t press, he never does and Steve never does to him either. Instead, he leans over and presses a kiss, just small one, on Steve’s cheek and lets him continue his art and his drawings. Bucky’s happy to do his own thing, mooching around the apartment filling his time with little things here and there. He’s a big fan of podcasts, so sometimes he’ll listen to those while he works out. He’s taken to cooking now as well, and that’s what he decides to do now. If Steve’s been in a funk all day and it’s only eleven Bucky figures he hasn’t eaten much yet so he heads to the kitchen to make something for him.

 

Once he moves the a pan onto the stove Rebecca comes walking over, taking her usual seat on the counter while he watches him cook. It’s nothing special, just a tamagoyaki. It’s one of those easy things he learnt while he was in Japan on and off in the seventies. You always have a stove and a pan and some eggs in the house somewhere so he learnt how to cook it pretty early on, the recipe a firm fixture in his mind all these years later. He throws some cheese and mushrooms into it, and fries some potatoes on the stove as well, and cooking really is the only thing his metal arm is good for. He washes it and uses it instead of a spatula, flipping the potatoes and rolling the tamagoyaki with it instead of the chopsticks you’d use traditionally. Steve usually perks up once the smell of food reaches him but he hasn’t said anything yet, still on the couch with his sketchbook on his lap, the sunlight making sure to hit his cheekbones before it goes on its way. 

 

Bucky finishes cooking, handing Steve the plate where he gets a light hand squeeze and an  _ ‘I love you’ _ before he goes to start cleaning up. He knows that Steve appreciates it and that really all he could ask for. At least Steve is functioning on his bad days. When its Bucky he lays in bed, sometimes crying sometimes not, sometimes violent sometimes not. Steve has had to restrain him on multiple occasions although he doesn’t like to think about it, but he just sits in their bedroom with the curtains drawn while his past comes back to get him. Doing art the way that Steve does, or even leaving their room seems unfathomable. 

 

Steve stays like that for the rest of the day, legs crossed in the same way, only sometimes getting up to go to the bathroom. He doesn’t even put any music on, instead he lets the sound coming from the open windows guide him through his drawings. Bucky doesn’t approach him again, he gives him his space and sticks to their bedroom where he folds clothes that are around the room in piles and cleans up a little, but it turns four o’clock when he starts getting worried.

 

Not  _ worried  _ worried, he knows that Steve will be fine but that long without any talking isn’t good for anyone (as if Bucky hasn’t gone months in the past between talking to people) and he’d rather he at least share the same space with Steve even if they aren’t actually talking.

 

So, he goes into Steve’s studio and finds the drawer that has acrylic paints in it. They’ve never done this before, but he figures that acrylic would be what sticks best to his arm. Bucky admittedly knows jack shit about colour theory and what looks nice with what so he just picks his favourites- Steve can figure out the rest. He grabs some brushes from one of the mason jars on the counter too, and a palette, and heads back into the living room.

 

Steve’s still there, drawing as ever but looking more concerted this time. It takes him a moment to notice that Bucky’s standing in front of him. Once he realises looks up at him, his mouth forming a small ‘o’ as Bucky puts the supplies onto the coffee table and holds out his arm. 

 

“Paint.”

 

Steve looks at him for a moment, tipping his head. “Your arm?”

 

“Why not?” Bucky shrugs, smiling a little as he ruffles his hand through Steve’s hair.

 

Bucky’s about to to take a seat next to Steve on the coach but Steve ushers him over to the window for the natural light, telling Bucky to grab a chair while he scoops up the tubes of paint and brushes. It’s nice, kind of seeing Steve in his element, and Bucky isn’t complaining that he gets to see the sun hitting his skin for a little while longer. 

 

Steve has Bucky’s arm resting against the back of an old canvas like a makeshift table by the open window, overlooking a sidestreet in Brooklyn. (although it’s always so loud that calling it a sidestreet sounds redundant.). Steve seems confused at the choice of colours but laughs quietly when he realises that Bucky’s just picked his favourites.

 

So, he starts at the shoulder. The base is a deep red, to cover the star emblazoned over his deltoid with the thickest brush that Bucky brought. It’s an unsurprising move but a nice one nonetheless, that Steve doesn’t want it to be visible once he finishes his artwork. The strokes over it are done without much thought, but once he starts moving down the arm the brushes get smaller and the details become more precise.

 

Steve’s grabbing blues and greens and oranges and painting what looks to be feathers going down all the panels of his arm, big ones that reach half the way around the circumference of his arm followed by much smaller ones that are just there to fill the gaps. Bucky was assuming they’d be simple block colours but he realises that this is going to be much more intricate as Steve bites his tongue between mixing greens and whites and dipping into blacks to create highlights and shadows. Bucky can’t figure out what it is as Steve continues painting down his arm, he tries asking but Steve just looks up at him and smiles, before leaning back down to continue.

 

Once the red that Steve started with has dried he goes back up to it, the feathers stopping with what looks like claws of some kind,  _ ‘so its a bird’  _ but Bucky’s seen plenty of birds in his time and this doesn’t seem like any of the ones he’s seen before.

 

“What kinda colourful bird is this, Stevie.” He confronts him about it because there’s no way that this is a real bird and he wants  _ answers _ but there’s no way he’ll get them. Steve just laughs.

 

“Do you remember that time when you said goodbye to me after school on east ninety eighth and Lenox and then ran away and you didn’t come see me ‘til three days later?” Steve looks up from Bucky’s arm laughs a little. This time the sun’s hitting the side of his face. 

 

Bucky looks away from him and out the window ‘cause  _ goddamn  _ he had no idea how to hide a crush at fourteen. “Maybe I do and what about it?” He remembers it clear as day- he kissed little lanky Steve away and then pushed  _ him _ away as if Bucky wasn’t the one kissing him, and then ran off home all embarrassed and ended up telling his mom because he couldn’t keep it inside. 

 

“No reason, just curious.” And Steve looks as if there definitely is a reason.

 

His arm is getting along nicely and Steve seems to be feeling better than he was before and really that’s all Bucky was hoping for. It’s good for them both; Steve gets to feel better and Bucky gets to watch him work because by all accounts Steve Rogers is most beautiful when he’s making art. His eyebrows furrow just a little, and because his hands are busy his hair falls out of place from the constant movement up and down, up and down. He’s leaning over the canvas to reach Bucky’s arm but his legs are wide open too in those damn navy sweatpants (Bucky tries to gloss over it because now isn’t the time but he definitely does. Notice it.). There’s just something so incredibly gentle about the whole exchange, two super soldiers sitting opposite each other in an apartment building, one an artist, that’s painting an arm that was made for nothing other than causing pain. 

 

Steve puts the paintbrush down, and Bucky looks down at his arm. “It’s a phoenix.” 

 

In the time that Bucky has spent admiring Steve from opposite him, he’s transformed his arm into a canvas that has a phoenix wrapped around it.  _ ‘I knew it wasn’t real.’ _ Its feet are at Bucky’s shoulder and it’s head is just beneath his palm, if he were to put his arm up it would almost look as if it were flying. “ _ It’s beautiful.”  _

 

The paint has dried and Bucky does just that- he lifts his arm up toward the ceiling and it looks as if it were to start flying toward the sun. Bucky is fascinated, it’s been done with so much detail and he runs his real fingers across it so that he can feel the paintstrokes underneath his fingers. Steve watches him, a small smile across his face as he gets to see Bucky so impressed with something he feels is such a small gesture. 

 

“It’s because they’re born again, y’know? Kinda like you.”

 

And Bucky takes Steve’s hand in his own, preserving the phoenix on his other arm as they stare out into the Brooklyn sunset for a little while.

 

Yeah, kinda like him.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! please leave a comment if u did it feeds my motivation to write lmao.


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